"That reader, Bruno Marcoux, seems to have outdone even his expectations. Last night, he sent along an update that he had received 3,000 reservations for the Quebec group buy (the first group buy he’s organizing). If that doesn’t sound crazy to you, let me summarize: that’s freakin’ crazy!"

3,712 is nearly as many Nissan LEAFs as were sold in all of history in Canada. (That total is 3,967 through July.) Clearly, Nissan has to figure out how to get all of these Nissan LEAFs to customers — how to supply a market that has unexpectedly grown 2,342% in one month — which is part of the reason for closing the offer.

It came to an abrupt end ... and the Canadians aren't happy ... sorry but need to paraphrase the context of what I've heard on past visits to Montreal, one could say (in French) that they are:

Être en mosus / To be furious

French Canadians used to be a fiercely Catholic bunch. Things have changed, but the swear words they use are just riddled with deformed Church lingo. “Mosus” (or “mausus”) is a variation (pretty far-fetched) of “maudit,” meaning cursed, and it’s not that obvious to anyone, even the French, that it implies somebody’s in a bad mood.

The organization managed to get a significant discount of $8,349 on the LEAF. Both Nissan America and the local dealership contributed to the discount, and combined with both state and federal tax credits, the price came down to a more than reasonable $12,130 USD.

Could it be that Nissan pulled out of this group buy because they have something new coming in near future? Maybe the upgraded 40kWh-version of the current Leaf or Leaf 2? If the group buy had gone through and those 3000+ people had received their Leaf, and then Nissan had announced a new or updated Leaf some weeks later - wouldn't those 3000+ people felt that Nissan had ripped them off by selling them the old version while knowing that there would be a new version soon?

Was thinking along similar lines - perhaps the quantity involved would have disrupted their production planning as they move to the next LEAF offering.

Still, it seems very poor to cause such a thing happen. It could make you wonder how committed Nissan is to selling EVs.

Any possibility that Nissan was asked by the Canadian/Quebec government to pull the plug on the sales? I'm not familiar with the incentive programs involved, but maybe it would have been too great a budgetary burden for the government entities to make good on.